Text-to-Video in AI-Enhanced Training and Marketing Modules: Testing Synthesia's Platform

Synthesia https://www.synthesia.io/ is a platform that generates video from text to create product promotion videos, narrated training videos, corporate onboarding and more.  

My first reaction was “wow!” and imagined an AI-powered app that would read a short story or training storyboard and create a full animation based on it.  So, my expectations were really high, and I was envisioning creating videos that could change the world – or at least generate serviceable learning and training videos, and perhaps even creative work. 

Here's a video I made, where I walk through the platform and also play the brief video I made: https://youtu.be/AMJDR67IaXA?si=gx2NXDfmxyATazi1 

I misunderstood the capabilities of the platform, but still, when I experimented with it, I was impressed with what could be done. Basically, Synthesia centers itself around a cast of avatars which are based on real actors, and they can be used to narrate the text in training and promotional videos.  The images and voices are generated from AI.  To deploy the avatars in productive ways, Synthesia has developed templates, which are professionally designed and which have built in some basics of instructional design and marketing.  On the instructional design side of things, they are not as rigorous as they could be, and it’s clear that these templates are points of departure, but not the end product. 

What I liked most about Synthesia:

·      I love the name!  It could be a goddess in ancient Greek mythology, especially if you pronounce it Sin-TAY-zee-a. 

·      Ease of use is a major “plus” – fit for purpose templates reduce the time of content development, and the fact they are modifiable is a huge “plus.”

·      Excellent selection of avatars – they are amazing. The voices are nice, too. That said, the platform allows you to represent yourself or any other person who upload their own videos. 

·      Templates – whether they be for training or product marketing, the templates feature branching scenarios for adaptive learning, corporate training (compliance, etc.), softskill training, product marketing

·      Collaborative capabilities: the platform allows multiple collaborators, and in the case of boo-boos, version history for recovery of work

·      The platform claims to have the ability to translate into 145 languages. It does not say how well, accurately, or idiomatically such a task would be performed.  My personal feeling is, “Don’t hold your breath” and my second thought was “Caution! Never release unchecked and unreviewed from AI into the wild!!!!”

What I liked less about Synthesia:

·      The first thing I noticed when I tried out the program was that Synthesia must review the script and if there is anything that aligns with the program’s “trigger” words, the whole project will be shut down. I experienced that myself.  I thought it would be fun to see how Synthesia tackled the idea of marketing / promoting a novel, Todos Santos, which is both sci-fi and horror, with some zombie elements along with scary technology and a deranged scientist. Welp. Synthesia said “NO” and would not stomach such project. I get it. A rogue scientist creating zombies is not a universally appealing premise. That said, what happens if you are doing medical training or launching a medical product? Will you be censored? 

·      I was really disappointed in the voice-over and the awkward phrasings and pronunciations.  I don’t know how easily one can train the voice, but it’s important. Since the main area of competitive advantage for this product is the idea that you can use an AI avatar instead of voice talent or actors, this is an important point. I guess it depends on what you want your ultimate level of quality to be. 

·      A final little quibble is that the learning templates did not have assessments built in, and I would have hoped for multiple choice quizzes at the very least. 

Final Thoughts

It is fascinating to see how products are being developed that utilize AI in various products.  They test assumptions about how people learn best online, and also encourage engagement.  

As in the case of all AI products, there are ethical issues – for example, in recording and training your own avatar, there could be potential for abuse. Where does the new content reside?  Is your image now in the Synthesia cloud and not actually owned or controlled by you?  Just wondering… 

Interview with Spencer Striker, History Adventures. Innovators in Education Series

 History can come alive online, especially in a gaming platform that allows the learners to immerse themselves not only in the time, but in the struggle to stay alive. Welcome to an interview with Spencer Striker, who has developed History Adventures, a unique educational that takes learners to the most intense times and places of history.

1. What is your name and your background? 
My name’s Spencer Striker. I’m a Digital Media Design professor at Northwestern University in Qatar. My background is a mixture of digital media production, digital learning design, and entrepreneurship—with an armchair passion for history. I grew up moving around a lot—mostly in New England, but also Los Angeles, San Diego, and Chicago. I was fortunate that I got to travel a lot as a kid because my mom loved to travel. She took us to Australia, Hawaii, and all over Western Europe—and this evoked a wanderlust in me as well as a fascination for different cultures and lived human experience. I finished high school in Chicago, then did my undergrad in History and Radio-TV-Film Production at the University of Texas. After that I tried my hand at writing novels for a while, while living abroad in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Brazil. That was an amazing adventure—but ultimately, I wound up broke in New York City, with some unpublished novels under my arm, and realized, as many people do in their mid-twenties, it was time to play the Get Out of Jail Free card and head to grad school!

After having tried old-school novel writing for a few years, I really missed collaborative media production. Writing novels is a lonely gig! I missed working with cross-disciplinary teams and all the technical/creative challenges of production/design. It was 2005, and I decided that interactive media was the future. I was fortunate to get into the New Media Design and Production Master’s Program at Indiana University. That’s where I really discovered my passion for building digital media projects and working with talented collaborators. At IU, I started a video game media studio called GameZombie TV, and scaled it up. That’s when I first saw how digital production technologies were colliding with entrepreneurial opportunities in totally unforeseen ways—and as we’ve seen over the past 15 years or so, digital media has disrupted how we do just about everything.

2.  How and when did you become interested in online learning?
Eventually, GameZombie TV came to a crossroads. Here was this online media production studio covering the video game industry that we’d built from scratch using the tools and resources available to grad students at Indiana University. We’d won Webbys, covered all the major game conferences, and achieved official partnerships with YouTube and Dailymotion. So at that point, I could try to make the project a professional organization—and achieve “escape velocity” from the university… or I could double-down on the education component of GameZombie TV—whereby this online production studio run by students at Indiana University had become a powerful way for students to learn all the different aspects of modern, team-based digital media production. Since digital learning design was my true passion, I decided to take this other route.

I got the opportunity to co-found the Media Arts and Game Development Program at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, and meanwhile expand the GameZombie project to the new university, introducing it to a whole new cohort of undergrads interested in the intersection of the video game industry and online media production. Driven by my enthusiasm for the project, as well as its momentum, I got into the PhD Program in Digital Media (in the School of Education) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, whereby I began to formally study the field of digital media and learning with some of the top experts in the world, including Kurt Squire, Constance Steinhuehler, Dawnene Hassett, and others. And at the same time that I was studying this cutting-edge field of digital media and learning, I was able to apply theory to practice in my day job as Lecturer/Co-Founder of the MAGD Program at UW-W.

3.  what have been some of your experiences in online learning? 
So I had this wonderfully intense experience in Wisconsin studying Digital Media & Learning at the doctorate level at Madison—while simultaneously working full time as Co-Founder of the MAGD program at Whitewater. Doing all this in combination with continuing to run GameZombie TV: the theory/practice of digital learning really got seared into me. Once I completed my PhD in the Fall of 2012, I wanted to try my hand at industry. I went out to Silicon Valley in January of 2013, and soon after that became Founding Creative Director for a games and learning startup called Galxyz, whereby we used a sci-fi narrative game design system to teach kids the Next Generation Science Standards. We managed to raise about $4 million dollars and build a fantastic little studio in Mountain View, CA. The cross-disciplinary team we assembled of educators, creative writers, animators, and game engineers was truly top-notch. After heading up creative and product for the company for two years, I was enthusiastic to return to academia, as I thought that would be the ideal environment in which to build my idea for a new digital product initiative, History Adventures.

4.  What is History Adventures?  
History Adventures is a tablet-based digital learning product that seeks to inspire curiosity for history by using various creative techniques, including character narratives, animation, 3D, interactive infographics, choose your own adventure, sound design, and original music. The idea is to bring history to life by exploring lived human experience through the lens of five amazing men and women who lived through extraordinary, gripping, and dramatic flashpoints in time.

5.  Why did you develop History Adventures, and what is the overall goal?
I developed History Adventures as a way to defeat this unfortunate notion some students hold that “history is boring.” I think the only reason students think that is because typical formal history education emphasizes all the most boring bits—and all the inherent action, drama, and emotional stakes get buried beneath long lists of kings, queens, facts, and dates. History Adventures foregrounds the power of story through the development of character narratives, intended to pull the reader/user into the emotional stakes of these people’s drama-filled experiences. At the same time, I’m using all the tools and tricks I have from digital entertainment product design, to make the product experience come to life and feel magical and fun.

6.  Please describe two or three History Adventures.
In this newest version of the product, History Adventures, World of Characters, Revolutions & Industrialization, 1750-1900, students will encounter five amazing men and women who have to work out where they stand in this age of dramatic, sweeping change.  In late 18th Century America, one unnamed slave turned spy, Agent 355, decides to risk everything for the cause of revolution and the principle of freedom. On the other side of the world in Australia, Jiemba of the Eora Nation, decides to fight for his traditions against British invaders intent on colonizing his ancestral homeland and trampling on his beliefs.

Half a century later, a Chinese trader, Fei Hong fights a different battle. Hong decides to smuggle British opium from India to China and loses everything as he goes from smuggler, to trafficker and finally addict before being caught. In 1890s Africa, Khari decides to oppose European trade and fight back against the Belgian exploitation of his ancient tribal lands along the Congo River. The Belgian’s murderous regime mercilessly extracts rubber using local labour and Khari refuses to let his tribe suffer any more. Resistance is the only choice. 150 years after Agent 355, a social reformer called Thomas Brown decides to disguise himself as a janitor and expose the truth about the infamous Chicago meat packing district. He uncovers a world of filth, corruption and reckless disdain for human life that leads him to question what the future will bring.

7.  What are your plans for the future?
Having just published the definitive version of History Adventures, World of Characters, Revolutions & Industrialization, 1750-1900, we’ve already begun development on the next product in the digital book series, Empires & Interconnections, 1450-1750. This new product will include enhanced interactive features, 3D designs, motion fx, and animation—as well as six fascinating new characters. A conquistador trekking through the treacherous jungles and mountains of 16th Century Peru, doomed to a dismal end in his quest for glory and riches. A woman in the Medieval court of Tokugawa Japan, trading in secrets and intrigue when the politics couldn’t be more high-stakes or ruthless. A man from Angola sold by Portuguese slave traders to the Jamestown colonists in 1619. A zamindar (tax collector) in Mughal India during the British conquest of the South Asian continent. A young woman of Turkish and Byzantine ancestry living through the traumatic 1453 Siege of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire. And finally, a Spanish alchemist living at the nexus of superstition, science, literacy, and the powerful Catholic Church, experiencing the Inquisition even as the Scientific Revolution is just gaining hold. The big picture goal of History Adventures, World of Characters is to spark enthusiasm for learning about the past… and bring the pages of history to life!

Interview with Eric Bockmuller, Tackk Learning: Innovators in E-Learning

Strategies for sharing instructional materials succeed when they work with the behaviors that people already embrace. This can seem like a moving target with social media, but there are ways to stay up to date. Welcome to an interview with the leadership, Eric Bockmuller and Dan Klammer, of Tackk, an innovative provider of ways for educators to share information and instructional materials.

1. What is your name and your relation to elearning?

Our name is Tackk and since our launch in September we've really seen educators embracing Tackk as a tool for the classroom and especially homework. We didn't set out to build Tackk as a learning solution -- just one to help people create and share content in the simplest way possible. The fact that Tackk is becoming so popular among educators, though, confirms  there was a real need for a simple content creation tool for students and teachers.

2. What do you think are the top two or three elements that contribute to effective engagement and learning in an elearning or mlearning environment?

We built Tackk with three core principles in mind:

1. We eliminate friction - No sign-up or login required, no design skills necessary,no community to join
2. We simplify creation - Instant editing and addition of images, video, and form fields
3. We make sharing easy - Share via email, social networks, embed or pasting your URL

In a nutshell, Tackk empowers everyone (not just designers and web developers) to create and share content on the web. This simple approach unlocks creativity and gives voice to more ideas - the cornerstone of any productive learning environment.

3. What is Tackk?

Tackk was co-founded by two designers (Eric Bockmuller and Dan Klammer) who were getting a lot of requests for one-off digital designs from friends whose tech skills maxed out at typing an email. Our idea was to build a simple tool that would let anyone create and share great looking content instantly on the web.

No software or login is required. No design skill needed. No community to join. Just visit the Tackk home page and start typing. When you’re done creating your Tackk, you can immediately share it with friends in your social networks or the internet at large. It’s no more complicated than tacking a flier to the coffee shop bulletin board.

4. Who uses Tackk and why?

One of our goals when we launched Tackk was to prove that a broad spectrum of people would find Tackk valuable across an equally broad range of uses. We were successful on both counts.  We see Tackks ranging from the birth of a new baby http:// tackk.com/etdmvm to selling cars and boats http://tackk.com/2006Crownline200LS, to recipe ideas http://tackk.com/eahow6. We’ve also seen people from all walks of life creating Tackks. In fact, more than half of our users don’t speak English as their primary language, with 18% of our users coming from Japan.

There is an obvious need in the market for users to generate and share their content on the web with a dead-simple solution. With most tools you're either limited by the number of characters and photos you can add or you have to commit large amounts of time into writing a blog, creating a video or building a website. Tackk eliminates all that and lets you share content on the web without any of those limitations.

5. Could you give a few examples of how / where / when Tackk has been used successfully?

Assignments:

a) Music reports: It looks like one class did reports on a wide range of artists -- from Justin Bieber to Ray Charles to the Rolling Stones -- incorporating images, multimedia and copy.

http://tackk.com/elvis-presly 

http://tackk.com/RayCharles1 

http://tackk.com/jackson5 

http://tackk.com/1532xv 

http://tackk.com/ChubbyCheckerSongs 

http://tackk.com/Metallicafanpage 

http://tackk.com/thedoors 

b) History/geography reports (some with citations):

http://tackk.com/qa2msk 

http://tackk.com/tiananmen-aufstand 

http://tackk.com/pva2j3 

c) Student career goals/plans:

http://tackk.com/u9ckc9 

http://tackk.com/0xtagm 

d) Government assignment... replacing Congress?

http://tackk.com/tackkboard/Dolce1gov

e) One of the first classroom uses of Tackk. Koko the Gorilla reports!

http://tackk.com/ceqo2m 

http://tackk.com/sb94rg 

http://tackk.com/h5rldl 

http://tackk.com/ywyf6s 

http://tackk.com/g1cffc 

http://tackk.com/5ap1b9 

http://tackk.com/koko-austin 

http://tackk.com/dnbcwq 

http://tackk.com/fk5ff8 

http://tackk.com/mgbpze 

http://tackk.com/ik4pqx 

http://tackk.com/byfry0 

http://tackk.com/lgra4u 

http://tackk.com/whitney 

http://tackk.com/5sptzb 

http://tackk.com/rmm6va 

http://tackk.com/6f8vsr

One of our employees even contributed his own Tackk, which was shared with the class, about his visit to Rwanda: 

http://tackk.com/r3j4j1

Communication among teachers:

a) List of resources for ESL teachers:

http://tackk.com/currentevents

b) Event promotion for educators:

http://tackk.com/gz1wqi 

http://tackk.com/mnyqmr 

http://tackk.com/krotcn 

http://tackk.com/n8lgab 

c) Sharing tips, best practices and education thoughts: 

http://tackk.com/980190 

 Communication with students/parents (facilitating class): 

a) Posting class resources and readings: 

http://tackk.com/tackkboard/McCright 

b) Post assignments and reminders:

http://tackk.com/gmf2az

6. what do you think are some of the most exciting trends right now?

It’s so obvious that it sounds trite, but the Internet has changed so many aspects of how we communicate and share stories. User generated content (or UGC) has become a powerful, democratizing force in how we decide lots of things -- from what products to buy to which leaders to elect. YouTube and Twitter, at their core, are tools for capturing and sharing stories and have empowered millions of people to have a voice in the world. However, many of the tools available to normal people are still more complicated than they have to be or don’t allow for robust storytelling. New tools like Tackk are emerging to make it easier for anyone to tell rich, engaging stories. 

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Writing for Human Relations by Texture Press

Susan Smith Nash